Page 27 of Guarded King

“Come in,” I call, already knowing who it will be.

Chloe steps in, carrying a bag full of takeout containers. The name of one of the restaurants that supplies us with lunches is printed on the side.

As she approaches, she gives me the perfectly polite, perfectly professional smile she always does. The one that’s begun to grate on me. Because, as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve started to wonder what it would be like if she gave me a genuine, full-fledged smile. One that would light up those too-pretty eyes of hers. And wondering what my assistant would look like if she smiled at me as if she were more than my assistant brings me dangerously close to a slippery slope I have no desire to slide down.

“Thanks, Chloe,” Tate says as she hands him a container. Cole echoes the sentiment when she passes the second over. When she reaches me, I take the box, my fingers brushing the tips of hers. “Thank you, Miss Callahan.”

“Is there anything else you need while I’m here?” she asks.

“That’s all. Feel free to take your lunch now.”

“Sophie should be about ready for hers too if you’re planning to meet up,” Tate says, earning himself a significantly brighter smile than I received.

I force my jaw to unclench. It doesn’t matter if she graces both of my brothers with more warmth than she gives me. How much she smiles and at whom has absolutely no bearing on her role as my assistant.

After she leaves, we dig into our food, and the room goes quiet.

Unfortunately, when Cole finally breaks the silence, he steers the conversation away from EcoTech. “How are things going with Chloe? I haven’t heard any complaints from you, so I assume she’s doing a good job.”

Chloe is the last thing I want to talk about. Shoulders knotting, I stab a fork into my lunch. “She’s doing fine.”

Tate chuckles, his golden-brown eyes creasing at the corners. “Don’t go overboard with the praise.”

“What’s with the whole, Miss Callahan, thing?” Cole interjects. “You never called Lena by her last name.”

I glare at them both. “Is the way I refer to my assistant really relevant to this discussion?”

Cole arches his brows. “Since we’re discussing her, then yes, I think it is.”

“We’re not discussing her, we’re discussing EcoTech.”

“Wrong.” Tate balls up his napkin and drops it into his takeout box. “Wewerediscussing EcoTech, now we’re discussing Chloe.”

Pushing my own container away, I pin him with a glare. “We’re not discussing her. Cole asked a question, I answered it, and now we’re moving on.”

My brothers exchange a look, and I take a deep breath to stop myself from snapping at them. They’re not to blame for my irritable mood.

Roger Haverscombe is.

After our meeting the week before last, we met with Wright Construction and offered them the contract for the InnovaCore headquarters project. Haverscombe didn’t take the news well. Normally, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck what he thought, except he’d announced the very next day that his company would also be bidding to acquire EcoTech.

“Haverscombe doesn’t have the resources to match ours,” Tate says, correctly interpreting my bad mood. “There’s no way they’ll beat our bid.”

Cole frowns. “True. But they’re more than capable of driving up the price and forcing us to pay more than the company’s market worth.”

“I’d bet that’s exactly what his goal is.” I tap my pen on my desk. With men like Roger, it’s always personal—the old boys’ club at its worst. Before our meeting, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but then he went and proved himself to be the same kind of man as my father. That alone means I have no interest in doing business with him.

Renewed anger simmers hot in my stomach as his comment at the end of our meeting replays in my mind. The asshole blatantly suggested I was fucking Chloe—and he didn’t even have the decency to say it out of her earshot. As if he didn’t have the slightest doubt about who I was and who she was.

Surprisingly, it was anger on Chloe’s behalf that had burned through my veins first, even before my concern for how a rumor like that might affect me and the King Group.

I’m not used to thinking about other people’s feelings. Maybe I should have taken it as validation of my concerns and sent her on her way.

But I didn’t.

From the composed way she handled the situation, to the way she stood up to me in the car, her contradictions intrigue me a little too much. And if they intrigue me, they’ll be like catnip to other men.

She’s better off with me.

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